King of Shadowed Halls
by Jael the Scribe
Summary: As a shadow falls upon Greenwood the Great, Thranduil takes steps to protect his people. The building of the underground fortress casts his personal life into shadow as well. Will he lose that which is most dear to him in an attempt to save it?
1. A Cry in the Night

As a shadow falls upon Greenwood the Great, Thranduil takes steps to protect his people. The building of the underground fortress casts his personal life into shadow as well. Will he lose that which is most dear to him in an attempt to save it? Drama/Angst. Thranduil; Galion; OFC. Rated Mature for mildly graphic sexual activity between a married couple.

**King of Shadowed Halls**

_". . . whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God."  
Ruth, 16_

**Part One: A Cry in the Night**

_"Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved . . ."  
Song of Songs_

Heat beat against Thranduil's face; everywhere he turned, it hit him like a slap. The smell of burning filled his nostrils, and choking smoke seared his lungs with every breath.

Oropher's palace among the trees was ablaze, the ancient wood going up like dry tinder. Thranduil ran through the halls of his dying home, listening to the agonized screams of his people. He ran, the fear pounding in his heart, seeking something elusive. Or did he try to escape?

In his mind echoed the mocking voice of a creature of shadow and flame: _You cannot fight. You cannot flee. You cannot hide. I come for you, son of Oropher._

How? How had it come to this?

Rounding a corner, he realized where he was and why he had come. He threw open the door of his bedchamber. Already the room was engulfed in flames. Lalaithiel stood pressed against the far wall, trying to shield herself against the fierce heat. She held out her hands to him, lips moving in a silent plea in the shimmering currents of air: _Husband_!

He fought his way toward her - just as the ceiling collapsed in a shower of sparks, burying her under a pile of charred beams. Frantically, he tore at the rubble, ignoring the pain as his palms grasped the glowing wood. In his mind he heard the mocking laughter of the balrog. His ears echoed with the sound of his own screams as the fire consumed his flesh: "No . . .!"

Thranduil sat upright in bed with a gasp. The summer night was cool. Outside his window, crickets sang in the trees, and a quarter moon cast a splash of pale light across the wooden floor. The pine scent of the Emyn Duir blew in on the breeze.

Lalathiel lay spooned beside him. She stirred, placing a reassuring hand on his arm. "Is it the old dream again, my love?" she muttered, her voice thick with sleep.

"No," he whispered, as he willed his hammering heart back into its regular cadence. "This is a brand new dream."

He fell back onto his pillow, trying to forget.

~o~

Lalathiel lay waiting quietly in the darkness, as Thranduil's ragged breathing slowly returned to normal. After more than a thousand years at her husband's side, she knew him very well. Having unmanned himself by crying out in the night like a frightened child, he would seek to redeem himself in the time-honored fashion of a male. His need for her after waking up in a trembling sweat was one of the few compensations for the nightmares that had plagued him since his return from that cursed war in the south.

Sure enough, she soon felt the tickle of his breath in her ear, the touch of his hand upon her shoulder and a familiar fleshy prodding against her thigh. She turned to him with the soft sigh she used to signal her assent. With gentle, practiced hands, he made her ready and topped her. As their bodies moved together in the graceful harmony of a long-mated couple, she felt him reach out to touch her spirit, seeking to perform the effort of will that would call a new elven _faer _to the child they sought to conceive. It seemed to her that he tried . . . and fell short, held back by the shadow that had trammeled his wounded spirit ever since his return from Mordor.

What horrors had he seen in that dark land so long ago? She often wondered as he thrashed in his sleep and muttered of swords and blood and sobbed out his father's name, only to wake and shake his head in silent response to her queries, refusing to share whatever evil vision haunted him.

In her mind, Lalaithiel held her arms out to her husband, striving to bring him to her, lending her strength to his. Almost, almost . . . He shuddered and thrust hard into her, and she felt only a brief moment of regret as the waves of her own bodily pleasure broke over her, carrying her away. Next time, surely.

As they returned to their senses, he made as if to roll away, but she clutched fiercely at his naked back. "No - stay as you are."

"I'll fall asleep on top of you if I stay like this," he mumbled. "I'll crush you."

She laughed in the darkness. "No you won't." She held him, stroking the back of his head, pressed down into the mattress by the familiar comforting weight of his body as he slipped into sleep. "Never, my love," she whispered. "You'll never be too heavy for me to bear."

~o~


	2. The Shadows Deepen

**Part Two: The Shadows Deepen**

_"The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings' palaces."  
Proverbs_

Thranduil rubbed the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair. The written figures he'd been studying for the past two hours swam before his tired eyes, but they told a satisfying story. The food stores gathered by his people during the summer months - nuts for bread and oil, various fruits both dried and preserved, with the excess made into wine, and the roots and herbs that the forest yielded - would be sufficient to get them all through the winter, augmented by the fresh game his hunters would bring in.

There had been years in which his realm had been forced by the scarcity of naturally occurring food into trading their furs and his father's slowly dwindling hoard of gold to the _Edain_ who dwelt on the wide river plain to the west in return for the grain they grew. But not this year.

Less reassuring to him were the reports of his scouts. A tower of stone had begun to rise on the summit of Amon Lanc, once their home but long abandoned after Oropher had taken them ever northward to put distance between himself and the _Naugrim_ of Moria, or so he said. Thranduil had always suspected it had as much to do with the growing influence of his distant cousin Celeborn and his _Lachenn_ wife in Lothlórien, although he held his peace about it. At first, he'd thought it a quaint eccentricity to be tolerated in a parent. But after the events during the campaign of the Last Alliance, he understood his father's mistrust of the _Golodhrim_ only too well.

Three times they had moved, uprooting the folk to do so, and Oropher had promised their current home would be the last. And so it had been, for almost ten long-years, by Thranduil's count. The western glens of the Emyn Duir were a good home to him, filled with sweet memory.

However, the newcomer upon Amon Lanc had orcs and other foul things in his train. A cold hand gripped Thranduil's heart when he looked to the south and thought of that fell tower casting its shadow over the sunlit hilltop of his childhood. Sauron's evil was supposed to have been banished from the Middle lands forever and yet . . .

His desk held reports of a growing shadow emanating from the south. Strange creatures in the woods: black squirrels, black butterflies, and spiders of a size more suited to the spawn of Ungoliant than for those tiny innocuous beasts that wove their webs in the crannies of a household and kept the vermin in check.

The door to his privy chamber crashed open. "My lord! Is Master Galion with you? I must find him!"

"He was in my bedchamber attending to the airing of my court robes last I saw him." Thranduil put on his best indulgent smile for the panicked waiting-maid. The girl was young and had no idea of proper ceremony. "Now what is so urgent that you must burst in on your King at his work?"

"His wife, Mistress Nínim - he must come now!" The girl was nigh unto incoherent. "She's dying!"

"Morgoth's balls," Thranduil muttered. Hang protocol. He cast his quill aside. "Take me to her. Now!"

"Her granddaughter's chambers, my Lord, follow me quickly!"

Thranduil trailed the weeping girl through the hallways of his own palace. He found the room filled with people when he arrived: healers, guards, and a woman clutching an infant to her chest and sobbing hysterically. His chief healer, Nestalinde, knelt over the convulsing form of Galion's wife. She spared him a desperate glance before returning to her work, tightening a thong tourniquet around the woman's upper arm and applying astringent herbs to a blackened puffy wound on her hand.

"What happened here?" he demanded helplessly.

One of the guards pointed to the corner, where a spider the size of a small dog lay with its legs curled in death, one of its eyes oozing sickly pale fluid. "It got in through the open window, Sire, near as I can tell. Mistress Nínim came in and found it on the edge of the cradle, going for the babe. She plucked it back and managed to stab it through the eye with a fire poker, but not before it dealt her a killing sting. She saved her grandchild but . . ." He shook his head.

To his horror, Thranduil could see that Nínim's fingers and the tip of her nose had begun to darken and shrivel. Her eyes had rolled back in her head and a trickle of foam ran from one corner of her mouth.

Thranduil swallowed the bile that rose in his own throat. He knew how spiders fed, dissolving their prey from the inside and sucking out the juice at their leisure, leaving only the hollow husk dangling in their webs. "Galion is in my chambers. Send for him immediately. There's no time to lose."

"It is already done, my Lord. I dispatched people to any location he might be."

Sure enough, Galion came through the door at a dead run and threw himself to his knees beside his prostrate wife. "Nínim? I'm here, love. Speak to me, I beg you!" Her sightless eyes stared past him. "Please, _meleth_, don't do this! Stay with me . . ."

_'I should not be seeing this,'_ Thranduil realized. It was too raw, too intimate. He had no more business witnessing the final moments of Galion's marriage than he would have its consummation. Privacy - he must give them what privacy he could. "Out!" he ordered. "All but Galion and the healers."

The young woman turned a tear-stained face to the tableau and hesitated. "Grand-nana . . ."

"Now!" He hustled her from the room and shut the door behind him.

He leaned back against the wall, thinking of the open windows throughout his palace and of spiders climbing silently up walls and dropping from the trees. _Sweet Elbereth . . ._

"Thranduil! What happened?" Lalaithiel came hurrying towards him, her hands still damp from her dye work.

He held his arms out to her, unable to trust his voice, and shook his head. He drew her in, feeling the comforting warmth of her body next to his, burying his face in her fragrant dark hair. And in his mind's eye it was Lalaithiel who lay stricken on the floor. He tried to shut out the vision of himself kneeling beside her, holding her hand and watching helplessly as she died, consumed from within . . .

~o~

Thranduil sat at his desk, not really seeing the document in front of him. He had read it three times in the past hour, and each time he had forgotten what it held. The palace echoed with the sound of hammering as his artisans affixed wooden grills to every window.

The door creaked open. "Your tea, Sire."

He looked up, instinctively expecting to see a dark head and then stopped short. "Fefelas . . .?"

"Galion is with his family, my Lord, doing . . . what must be done."

Thranduil sighed. Galion's wife had died in the night, never wakening. The absence of his valet's familiar face drove the loss home even further.

"Thank you, Fefelas."

Comfort. The familiar. Thranduil thought of this as the door shut behind the servant, realizing how complacent he had become, how assured of his safety. He looked around his privy chamber, seeing it as if anew: the carvings on his wooden mantel, worn smooth by years of the hands of chambermaids as they steadied themselves while stooping to clear the ash from the hearth, the view from his window, changing ever slowly as trees grew up, died, and were replaced by their offshoots.

He rose and wandered out into his throne room, his eyes taking in the high, vaulted rafters and the carved throne. How gingerly he had sat upon it at first, returning home following his father's death in the south, yet by now it had worn itself to the contours of his body. He thought of the room upstairs to which he had brought Lalaithiel as a young bride. Theirs now - it fit them like an old, broken-in boot.

But what did he see, now that he looked at it with a fresh eye? Wood. Old, dry wood and thin walls - and the forest outside growing darker, less green. Walls that would never stand against . . .

His mind could no longer block out the report on his desk. Orcs had attacked a settlement at the southernmost edges of his realm. They had been turned back with only a few casualties, but the fact that they had attacked at all was troubling. Following the loss of Isildur at the fields of the Gladden, Thranduil had hunted the ones responsible, driving them into the sanctuary of the Misty Mountains. The remainder had hidden themselves in the far corners of the woods, he had no doubt. But they had known better than to assail his folk. Until now.

Where one band came, others would come. In a changing world, this palace, so long a delight, would never withstand an attack. Thranduil needed a fortress.

With a last wistful glance at his throne room, Thranduil returned to his privy chamber and removed a small wooden casket from the drawer of his desk. Inside lay a ring of carved onyx, incised with a stylized beech tree. He took it up and held it, clenching his fist until the sharp edges of the stone dug painfully into his palm. The signet felt as cold as it had when he took it from his father's dead finger at the end of the last Age. "Oh, Father, some wisdom, please. What am I to do?"

As ever, he heard nothing but silence, felt nothing but emptiness. After more than a thousand years he had trouble recalling Oropher's face to his mind.

But memory came at last, an odd memory of himself as a child, on the sunlit summit of Amon Lanc. Oropher sat beside him on the grass, in shirtsleeves, his face turned up to the sun, free of kingly care. They had not often been alone, just the two of them, and Thranduil smiled softly as he remembered the day.

In the blue sky, a hawk circled lazily, borne aloft on the warm summer winds. Only a few yards from their feet, a lone rabbit hopped about, grazing on tender shoots. Turning his attention back to earth from a cloud that looked like the rump of his pony, Thranduil saw the hawk cease its circling and stoop. "_Ada_," he whispered, "the rabbit . . ."

"Hush, Thranduil," his father had said, laying a reassuring hand upon his shoulder. "Stay still. All will be well."

Sure enough, as the shadow of the plummeting bird crossed the grass, the rabbit put on a burst of speed and disappeared down an almost invisible hole in the hillside. The hawk swooped low and then retook the sky, seemingly unperturbed.

Thranduil heard Oropher chuckle beside him. "Watch, my son. Watch and learn from the birds and the beasts and all the other things of nature. They have a wisdom that the 'Wise-elves' of the west have forgotten long ago in their love of gems and power."

"The rabbit hides, Father. It is a weak, cowardly thing."

Oropher had sighed then. "Don't think like the _Golodhrim_, son. It is not cowardice to run from a fight you cannot possibly win. I came east to put a distance between myself and such things; to live as elves were meant to do. Our friend the coney has the best house of all, the earth itself. Elu Thingol knew this when he built Menegroth, and no one dared call him coward."

"No one dared call him coward," Thranduil whispered, returning the signet ring to its hiding spot. He took a deep breath and rang for a footman. "Fefelas," he said, when the servant appeared, "have Lord Séregon attend me now. Tell him it is a matter of urgency."

He waited patiently for his chief advisor to show up. The familiar room looked different to him now, dear, yet strange and fading, as he already mourned its loss. The door opened.

"My Lord?"

"Séregon, I want you to send out scouts, seeking a place with the specifications I shall give you." The hammering of the carpenters echoed as hollow as his heart. "Old friend, this is what I propose . . ."

~o~

**Translations:  
_Lachenn:_ Flame-eyed. A not very respectful Sindarin term for the Noldor  
_Golodhrim: _Noldor**


	3. The Cleft in the Rock

**Part Three: The Cleft in the Rock**

_"The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks;"  
Proverbs_

"No, that won't do. It won't do at all." Thranduil threw down the latest report of his scouts, ignoring his chief advisor's look of growing frustration. Site after site had been brought before him only to prove unacceptable. "How will we get our water?"

Water dripping through limestone had carved out the cave eons ago, but the ancient cataclysm that formed the Emyn Duir had raised it far above the ground water. The cave was dry as the fabled deserts of Rhûn.

"There is a spring two furlongs from the cave entrance, Sire. Water can be carried."

"In a siege?" Thranduil sighed. "Séregon, I would not put servants to such a task in the best of times. What else have you?"

"Very little that you have not found fault with already. Either the location is bad or the stone too hard for the delving or the mass of rock too small to house all of us. I begin to think, my Lord, that you do not really want to leave this place."

Thranduil shook his head and ran a weary hand through his hair. "I don't, Séregon. But I must. And if I do move us all, it will be to a place that will stand the test of time. Have you nothing else?"

"There is one, my Lord, a spot our northern scouting parties discovered. It is a natural cave on a river running through the northeast corner of the wood. It has the added advantage that Dwarves have been there some time in the past and done some tunneling. They seem to have abandoned it, though, in favor of that solitary mountain at the head of the River Celduin."

Thranduil almost made a face. If the _Naugrim_ wouldn't have it, why would he, a prince of the Eluwaith want it? But he sensed that he had tried the patience of his nobles with his exacting requirements and he sought at least to make the gesture of being reasonable. "Show me on the map."

"Here, my Lord," said Séregon, smoothing out a chart of the woods on the desk before him and pointing to the spot. "We hesitated to bring it before you because it was so remote . . ."

"It is a goodly distance from here," Thranduil agreed. "But it has the advantage of the river close by. Did the party take a survey of the dimensions of the hill?"

"Preliminary, my Lord. The hill might almost be called a mountain."

Thranduil quirked his lips. Did Séregon think he would be impressed by size? "Show me the report."

For the next twenty minutes, Thranduil pored over the notes of his scouts. The forest outside his window was darkening into twilight when he raised his head from the sheaf of pages. "Séregon, I need to see this place with my own eyes."

~o~

He told Lalaithiel he was going hunting. She did not question it, merely wishing him a pleasant respite from the burden of his duties and bidding him farewell with a kiss at his stirrup as he rode out. He had gone hunting before, and, before, he had returned. In a marriage of more than a thousand years, one in which he had been forced to leave her for seven years at the beginning, an absence of a mere two fortnights seemed but a heartbeat and a blink.

Thranduil had never lied to his wife before, not directly. He had kept things from her, most of them inconsequential, others not so. He never spoke of his time in Mordor, hoping to prevent the taint of that foul place from touching her. When he awoke, sweating and gasping in the night, from dreams of blood splattering like rain, the stench of death, and the screams of men dying, he only shook his head and told her to go back to sleep. He had fought so she might never know such horrors.

Of the soldiers' comfort that had passed between him and Galion in that cursed land, of the things a man does to keep himself sane out of fear and need, he had not spoken either. It had nothing to do with her; it need not trouble her.

An unease sat in his chest, a leaden feeling that jogged in the pit of his stomach like the sour remains of last night's dinner with every footfall of his horse as he rode northward. Galion, returned to his duty but still wrapped in his cloak of grief, rode a few paces behind, silent for once.

The lay of the land changed from the steep slopes and deep ravines of the Emyn Duir to gently rolling hills whose rise and fall he barely noticed in the thick forest. The woods changed as well, to a mixture of hardwood oak, ash and elm, with only an occasional evergreen among them. "How I will miss the smell of the pines!" he thought, realizing that he was bidding farewell to the land of his carefree young manhood.

On the sixth day of the first week, his scout signaled him. "Not far now, my Lord. The river lies half a league beyond this point."

Soft drops of autumn rain, still warm yet with a hint of chill that signaled the coming winter, pelted Thranduil's face as his mount picked its way down the side of a ravine that slashed downward through the flat plateau of the forest and led to a narrow flood plain. Beside a river whose banks were overhung with willows and stands of slender poplars, Thranduil paused and smiled, letting the breeze out of the north lift the hair away from his face. The hill, a ridge of limestone that thrust itself proudly up above the surrounding karst, was surely large enough to house them all. Henceforth, he would call it a mountain.

"The mouth of the cave, my Lord, is at the top of that fall of rocks."

Thranduil nodded, still assessing the area. The river was wide and swift enough to provide an obstacle to any invading army. They would have to build a bridge - or not, given the lesson of Nargothrond. He set the question aside for later consideration.

They crossed a rope bridge strung by the first scouting party. At the top of the pile of scree, one of the scouts lit a torch, and the party went inside, making their way through a twisting natural tunnel lit by the flickering red light. Thranduil felt the cool breath of the cave on his face and nodded in approval; ventilation would be less of a problem in a naturally breathing cavern. From time to time he saw rough tool marks on the walls where the dwarves had widened the tunnel for their own purposes.

"Why do you suppose they left?" asked Séregon from Thranduil's right. The advisor had come along to see the site for the first time himself.

Thranduil managed a shrug as he ducked his head under a low-hanging ridge of rock. The _Naugrim_ had enlarged the tunnel to suit their own ease, not that of taller folk. "No gems or gold to be delved here? But we're not here after treasure, Séregon."

Fifty paces in, the tunnel widened out into a natural chimney that rose high into the darkness. His mind began to work, planning a use for the chamber. He envisioned a grand staircase carved into the rock, rising up several levels.

High above, Thranduil heard the far off squeaking of bats. "Shit," he said.

Séregon turned to him, one eyebrow raised in mild surprise. Thranduil allowed himself the ghost of a smile. He was becoming more and more like his plain-spoken father as the years passed, but such vulgarity was uncharacteristic. "Guano," he explained. "The bat droppings make excellent enrichment for the soil. I had not thought the _Naugrim_ to be very interested in agriculture, but perhaps they hoped to trade it with the _Edain_ further east. At least it made this place worth their while until they determined there were no richer spoils to be had. How deeply did they delve?"

"Not extensively, my Lord," one of the scouts replied. "Down that tunnel there are several chambers - storerooms, workrooms and a dormitory by the looks of it. It's hard to tell with those folk, and they have long abandoned the place."

Thranduil nodded. The corridor stretched away into the gloom, cut from the living rock and incised with the sort of straight-lined decorations he recognized from his visit to Moria over a thousand years before. The _Naugrim_ had an odd sense of beauty, but no matter; when the tunnel was enlarged to Elven height and comfort, Thranduil would excise the Dwarven frieze and have another carved to his tastes. Vines perhaps, or intertwined tree branches to remind them of the forest outside, of the growing things they had left behind.

"This way, Sire."

Thranduil made as if to follow. 'Wait - what have we here?" he said, feeling a draft blowing against his right cheek. The current of air issued from a large cleft in the back wall of the natural chamber. He thrust his torch inside for a better look, watching the dance of the flame as it blew back at him. "There's something on the other end of this."

Ignoring his advisor's dubious noises about getting stuck or finding unfriendly animals, Thranduil eased himself into the diminishing crack. Almost immediately, he had to get down on all fours, and soon he found himself crawling along on his belly, pushing the torch in front of him. There came one awful moment edging around a boulder when he thought himself wedged tightly, but he calmed his breathing, let the air out of his lungs and pushed forward. He felt the ground drop beneath him and the hand holding the torch push through into a void. As his body followed, he looked up and smiled. His lips formed one word: _Perfect!_

The chamber that opened out before him spanned thirty paces from front to back and was almost as wide. Two men could have stood, one upon the other's shoulders, arms stretched high above the head, without the fingertips of the uppermost brushing the vaulted ceiling. The size, however, was not what had inspired Thranduil's pleasured exclamation.

Over the ages, water had dripped down through the ceiling, each drying drop leaving a tiny residue of mineral behind until they had formed an icicle of stone. Correspondingly, spires had built up from the floor, slowly, patiently, until they met in the middle, creating a forest of pillars. Their very randomness pleased Thranduil's sense of beauty.

At the far end of the stone chamber lay a natural ledge of limestone rising above the level of the floor by a height roughly equal to the length of his forearm. Thranduil eased out of the tunnel and picked his way over the rocky debris that littered the ground. He sat down on the ledge and rested his chin upon his drawn up knees. What an ideal spot to place a throne!

Propping his torch against a rock, he let his eyes fall half-closed and allowed his thoughts to drift. He let his mind flow down through the living rock, feeling the mass of the mountain above him, sensing the faults and crannies in the stone that he could exploit to his benefit in the design and delving. Drawing on his memories of Moria, he envisioned the narrow shafts that would bring in fresh air to chase the dankness and the ever-present smell of bat droppings. He plotted out the chimneys that would vent the smoke from the warming hearths and return the stale air to the outside world above. And light! Rather than the flickering red light of his single torch, he saw the glow from carved stone sconces filled with candles. Torches might do for the passageways, but his throne room would twinkle like the light of stars among the tree branches.

He laughed, and the sound echoed between the stone walls and columns, a hollow haunting sound. There came an answering chorus of high-pitched squeaks from the ceiling above, and an eddy of bats descended, buffeting about his face and hair like an angry whirlwind before heading for the tunnel. Thranduil's torch toppled, fell and went out.

"Cursed flittermice," he muttered as his heart began to pound and his eyes tried vainly to adjust themselves to the utter absence of light. The bats would be the first thing to go.

Never had he experienced a blackness so profound. Even during the three days of the month when the moon went dark, the friendly stars lit the sky and bathed the forest in their gentle glow. But now . . . He held his hand up in front of his face, wiggling his fingers experimentally. Nothing.

_'Stay calm, don't panic_,' he told himself, even though his body had begun to twitch like a frightened horse. It would not do to go blundering about in the dark, breaking an ankle on the rock-strewn floor or dashing out his brains against one of the stone pillars. He forced his breathing back to normal and remained seated on the rocky ledge, hoping that help would come before he had to grope his way back to the entrance.

Clearly, torches and candles would not be enough, for even Elven eyes could not see in pitch blackness. How had the Dwarves dealt with the problem? He cast his memory back to his visit to Moria over a thousand years past to demand satisfaction over a mithril necklace, recalling first the incredible size of the place and then the amenities. Many of the chambers had been dark, illuminated only by candles, but others had been lit by light shafts cut through the rock. And so would he, although Thranduil determined to do the Naugrim one better by bringing the light of day down from above with a series of strategically placed mirrors lining the tubes.

He was smiling at his own cleverness when he spied a faint glow. He blinked to make sure his eyes were not playing tricks on him, but sure enough, the reddish light emanated from the mouth of the tunnel.

"Sire?"

"My Lord Thranduil, are you all right?"

He heard Séregon's baritone and Galion's familiar tone of concern, then scuffling, and soon one body popped from the tunnel mouth, followed by the other. Both of them looked a little green in the complexion, he noted with some amusement. The tight spaces seemed to have that effect.

He composed his features and settled on his stone, arranging his limbs as if he were Elu Thingol himself, relaxing on his throne in Menegroth. "Over here. I'm quite well. However, I could use some light."

His advisor and his valet hurried toward him, their faces showing relief. "My Lord, when the bats burst from the crack . . ." Séregon said.

Galion wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air in distaste.

"I know - it stinks of the guano in here," Thranduil said.

"No - Dwarves," Galion replied.

Thranduil smiled softly. He supposed it did. "A little air will clear both."

Then Galion's face crinkled. "Look what you've done to your knees and elbows, Sire! And the front of your jacket. I'll have Morgoth's own time getting the dirt out." He began to brush fussily at Thranduil's shoulders and chest.

"Look at yourselves," Thranduil laughed. "Galion, save your efforts until we get back out of here."

The three of them crawled back out on their bellies, Thranduil bringing up the rear in case he really did get stuck this time and required a helping hand to pull him loose. "That is the first thing we'll enlarge," he said, as he stood up and finally allowed Galion to clean him off.

"My Lord?" asked Séregon.

Thranduil merely nodded. "See to it that we take an exacting survey of the dimensions of the mountain. I'll want to know precisely how much room we have to fit our delvings into. This is the place."

~o~

Lalaithiel awaited him upon his return. As ever, Thranduil's heart leapt to see her standing at the top of the palace steps when he rode up the path between the beeches and fragrant pines. In a moment, he had dismounted and was at her side.

"Did you get what you were after, my husband?" she said, carefully eyeing the carcass of the deer he had thought to shoot on the journey home and had slung across the back of his saddle.

"Yes, my love," he replied, taking her into his arms and kissing the top of her dark head. "I found it."

~o~


	4. A Time to Build Up

**Part Four: A Time to Build Up and A Time to Break Down**

_" . . .the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."  
Ecclesiastes_

"Privies," Thranduil muttered. "I hate them." He would never forget the two weeks he and Galion had spent digging the pit of a six-holer in the hard, rocky ground of Amon Lanc: the bone-jarring shock to muscle and sinew every time his pickaxe hit a rock in the flinty soil, the itch and tickle of his sweat in the hot summer sun, and then the biting of the flies. He vaguely wondered what had become of it, if that long-ago filled-in pit now lay under the foundations of the cursed tower that continued to rise on the summit of his boyhood home.

From that time onward he had seen outhouses as a necessary evil, nasty things that smelled no matter how often they were limed, and were a trial to walk to in rain and snow. But now, the issue of sanitary facilities presented him with a further problem. Before him lay the final survey of the cave on the Forest River. He knew down to the last hand-span the exact dimensions of the rock and the layout of the natural caverns he could expand to suit his own purposes. This was to be his fortress, with one single entrance guarded by spells. The prospect of sending servants out into the forest to empty chamber pots every morning seemed unappealing, not to mention impossible during a siege.

His surveyors had found a smaller branch of the river running beneath the mountain. They could empty their waste into that, but out of consideration for any of his people who might choose to live downriver Thranduil wanted another alternative.

Why couldn't people be like horses? His stable grooms simply piled the droppings and the sweepings from the stalls into one place and nature took care of it. Thranduil recalled the old manure pile on the summit of Amon Lanc and how it never seemed to grow. The grooms threw the waste onto the uphill side and by the time gravity had moved it to the downhill edge the natural process of decay had turned both manure and straw into a rich black soil which the gardeners prized as compost.

Thranduil let out a soft, "Hmmm . . ." and sat back in his chair, tapping the handle of his pen against his front teeth. Would it work? Enclosing the entire system posed problems, but those could be circumvented. He leaned forward and set to work.

~o~

"I've brought you tea and a piece of bread, Sire. I thought you might like some refreshment." Galion carefully set his tray down in the only corner of the desk free of papers. "How goes the work?"

"It goes well, old friend," Thranduil said, putting the finishing lines to a rough sketch. "Come, take a look. I think you will appreciate this."

Dutifully, Galion approached and looked down at the sheet of paper. "What am I looking at, Sire?"

"A diagram of our new privies," Thranduil replied, trying and failing to keep the pride in his own cleverness out of his voice.

The valet raised one dark eyebrow. "A multi-story outhouse? In that case, my Lord, I _do_ hope that I will be quartered on the top floor."

Thranduil held back a laugh. How good it felt to see his old friend emerging from his cloud of grief and finally feeling well enough to make a joke. "Of course your chambers will be handy to mine. We can't have you trudging long distances in case I need my shirt fastened or my robe held." He turned back and pointed to his drawing. "But, no, Galion - look here. Although they are clustered around a central shaft, the privies on each level are staggered so that none is directly below the one above. The waste falls to this long tunnel, here, with a gentle slope that will carry it out into the forest over a period of years. By the time it reaches the outlet, it will have turned into compost."

"But indoors, Sire? What about . . .?" Galion made a face. "Chamber pots are bad enough."

"The odor and the heat of the decomposition will be vented up this air-shaft to the top of the mountain." Thranduil leaned back in his chair and beamed.

"And I see you have even designed a private facility for your own chambers," Galion observed wryly. "Living underground may be more attractive than I thought. No more emptying your pisspot."

"I'm glad you feel that way, Galion. Now my job is to convince everyone else."

~o~

Thranduil bade his valet goodnight and, borne aloft on the fumes of the evening's wine, opened the door between his dressing-room and his bedchamber.

He found Lalaithiel sitting at her dressing table, engaged in some female business: plucking her eyebrows, applying berry juice to lips - whatever it was that women did at night to make themselves beautiful even when they already were beautiful to begin with. In all his years of marriage, Thranduil still had never quite figured it out. She had already changed into her simple nightgown of white linen. After more than a thousand years as his lady and his queen, she still refused to take a maid to help her with the personal details of her robing and toilet.

Her gown, a green and silver hue of her own weaving, hung neatly on a nearby peg. Thranduil had watched the play of its colors all evening as it hugged the curves of her body and changed with her movements, and she had looked so utterly toothsome that it was all he could do not to sweep her up and carry her upstairs right then and there. He smiled secretly to himself; the nightgown would not last long either.

Without a word, he stepped behind her and took up her hair, removing the silver clasps and running his finger to undo the plaits. How he loved the feel of it on his hands - like silk! When he had the braid undone, and her hair hung free, he pushed it to one side and bent to kiss the back of her neck, letting his warm breath tickle her skin.

Instead of her turning to meet his kiss, he felt her shoulders tense beneath his hands. "Just when exactly, Thranduil, did you propose to tell me about this plan of yours?"

Even in his surprise over the sudden change in her demeanor and the dangerous tone in her voice, Thranduil managed to hold back his first response: _How did you know? _He had never been able to keep anything from Oropher back in the old days. Why should things be any different with his wife now?

"The completion of the fortress is many years away. There will be time," he stammered.

Slowly she turned to face him. "And it never once occurred to you to ask me how I would feel about this?" Her grey eyes bored a hole through his chest. "Why, Thranduil?"

He waved a hand all round, ending up pointing toward the south. "Surely you know why. These woods are no longer safe. Orcs. Spiders. And that foul wight, whoever he is, whose tower profanes the summit of my old home." He had an idea, oh yes he did - one that even he feared to give voice to. The dreams of something even worse - of a great burning that consumed all he loved and had sworn to protect - troubled his sleep with increasing frequency. "I didn't wish to lay such burdens on your shoulders, my love."

"I am not some fragile cowering thing in need of shelter from all storms. I am your queen and your help-meet these many long-years. If I have not your heart and your confidence, Thranduil, I am your harlot, not your wife."

"Lalaithiel!" he said, shocked to hear the low term coming from her lips. "I would never think of you thus!"

"Oh, no? You keep secrets from me. If I am nothing more than a decoration to grace your arm and your table and the throne beside you, I am little more to you than those kept women I am told the _Edain_ use for their own comfort when their wives age and begin to pall."

"Be reasonable," he said. "The task fell to me to lead and protect us all, and I must be free to do it as I deem fit."

"You didn't even ask," she replied with increasing stridency. "You had no thought at all to my wishes in this matter. And now the work on the halls is well in hand; there is no turning back." She held up her hand as he tried to speak. "Thranduil, you cannot drag me far from my home and my family, to lock me below ground away from the fresh air and the sunlight, you simply cannot! I will die if you do that!"

_And you will die - we all will die - if I do not_, he almost shot back, but the edge of hysteria in her voice made the words stick in his throat. This was why he had dithered about telling her of his plan - for fear of precisely this sort of reaction. Neither could he give voice to the nightmares about burning and destruction, and to the most disturbing of all - a vision of him sobbing helplessly, crouched over a freshly turned patch of leaf-strewn earth. It would not happen. He would not let it happen.

"Lalaithiel, beloved," he said, reaching out to her, "let us talk of this tomorrow. Come to bed."

She batted his hand away. "Do not touch me, Thranduil. This is not some petty vexation you can smooth over by tupping me into complacency. Do . . . not!"

"Very well, have it your way," he said, finally becoming out of temper. If she would not see reason, he hadn't the energy to keep arguing about it. He shrugged off his robe, giving her a glimpse of . . . nothing at all, since the confrontation had left him feeling as if he'd been doused in cold water, and tossed it carelessly over the back of the nearest chair. He yanked back the bedcovers and slid naked between them. "Snuff the candles when you are through."

"Fine."

"Fine."

Thranduil pulled the covers up around his ears, turning towards his side of the bed and drawing his knees up to his chest. The room grew dark by increments as she extinguished the sconces at the dressing table and finally the one beside the bed. He felt the mattress settle beneath her weight.

Judging by the ragged breathing coming from the other side of the bed, Lalaithiel was having as hard a time as he was getting sleep to come. They lay curled back to back, no more than a hand span apart. Thranduil could almost feel the void between them as if it were a palpable thing, pulling at the base of his spine like a lodestone.

A small voice in his head said, _turn to her, you fool, and make this right; don't let the night pass in wrath._ But in his heart, he felt a deeper fear that anything he might say would stir things up further and make it worse, and each word he longed to say died at his lips.

Thranduil lay in the darkness in a miserable ball, sick at heart, until the visions finally carried him away.

~o~


	5. The Shadowed Hall

**Part Five: The Shadowed Hall**

_'By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.'  
Song of Songs_

Thranduil had hoped it all would blow over by morning. It did not. Outwardly, all seemed the same. Lalaithiel went about her days as usual. Her cool beauty graced the throne beside him, and she presided over his table with a smile as serene as it had been since the end of the previous Age. But at night they lay back to back, and the distance between their curled bodies grew as large as the bent sea that separated the Middle-lands forever from Aman. And the words that would heal the breach slipped further away from his helpless and muted tongue.

Work on the caverns continued apace. Chipping away at the solid rock went slowly, but Elves have nothing but time.

~o~

He was in conference with Nestalinde, discussing her newest treatment for spider-bites and the best means of disseminating them to healers in outlying areas, when the news reached him that orcs had made an attack on a settlement at the southernmost edges of the realm. Two were dead, and a border guard had gone missing.

Ignoring the breathless messenger, Thranduil watched his chief healer's face turn three shades paler and her left hand give an almost imperceptible twitch. Even though matters of security had nothing to do with healing, she spoke, breaking protocol. "They have him. You cannot let them . . ."

He nodded. "I know."

Thranduil insisted on leading the tracking party himself, over the usual grumbling by his general about how a king should not risk himself. Little mollified by Thranduil's customary explanation that a good ruler leads from the front rather than the rear, Magorion then insisted on coming along himself. And so did Galion, who clung to his wartime position as Thranduil's esquire with the tenacity of a dog snarling over a freshly tossed bone.

Thranduil was not the realm's best tracker. Neither was Magorion. They relied upon the woodcraft skills of one of the soldiers in the border patrol to pick up the clues of the missing guard's abduction and keep them on the trail once they had found it. Even so, orcs were pitifully easy to track, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake: trampled undergrowth, rude campsites littered with garbage and unburied feces, and corpses of small animals killed for the sport. Other signs, a few scraps of green cloth and blood that was red rather than black, confirmed that the orcs had the missing Silvan guard still alive, but Thranduil despaired of his fate.

They traveled southward, catching up to their quarry with each passing day, until one afternoon, while the trackers searched for signs of the broken trail, Thranduil realized the forest terrain about him was very familiar. The trees were different, but he knew the lie of the ridge and the valley beyond, having hunted in it many a time. He had made his first kill there, a three-point buck, as a stripling lad of less than forty summers.

"It's two ridges over," he whispered to Galion. "Amon Lanc. Our old home."

"I knew we were close," Magorion muttered nervously. "I swear, I can smell them."

Thranduil nodded, as a new plan entered his mind. "I'm going to have a look."

"My Lord, is this wise?"

Thranduil held back a sigh. When would his chief general realize that he was a seasoned ruler and not some green princeling new to the throne? "Not wise, perhaps, but necessary."

In truth, he could not have explained his reasoning adequately. He felt the normal desire to lay eyes again upon his boyhood home, and there was also the need to see for himself just what had become of it. But beyond that, Thranduil had begun to doubt himself over the past months, to wonder if his decision to uproot them all was an overreaction made out of unreasonable fear. Lalaithiel seemed to think so. "I wish to take the measure of this new enemy myself."

"Very well," said Magorion, laying his hand upon his sword hilt. "I will accompany you."

Galion nodded. "Let's go."

"Oh, no," Thranduil said. "I am going alone."

"I really must protest, Sire," Magorion said. "You must not take this risk."

"Must not, indeed?" Thranduil said with a wry smile. "I must do this, that much I know, but I will not put any of you into danger."

"My Lord, this area is teeming with orcs -" Magorion began.

Thranduil put up his hand. "Enough. I am your King," he said, keeping his voice low for safety, well aware that his general was probably right. He glanced quickly at Galion, who was staring at him with that 'crazy as his father' look of his. "I'll be safer on my own, rather than tramping through the woods with you two like a cursed processional. We might as well have a trumpeter blow a fanfare to announce our passage."

Galion shrugged. Magorion looked unhappy and muttered something Thranduil failed to hear and cared not to.

Thranduil nodded. "I will return."

He turned and made his way southward, moving silently through the forest as his father had taught him, becoming a squirrel among the boughs, a vole among the roots. Yet there were no squirrels or voles, and no birds sang. Even the trees seemed darkened and twisted, crying out in anguish to him as he passed, "_Why did you desert us_?"

Thranduil dropped to the ground and crawled on his elbows and knees, keeping his head low as he crested the final ridge. Although he had thought he had steeled himself for the changes in his old home, his first sight of what it had become caught him unprepared. The tower thrust up from the summit of the hill like a jagged finger flaunting an obscene gesture at the skies, and over him fell the same nameless gnawing fear that he had felt in Mordor when gazing upon Barad-dûr. Thranduil had always wondered if others in Gil-galad's besieging army had the same reaction, but he'd never quite had the courage to ask, merely keeping as much distance from the place as was possible during the siege proper and averting his eyes.

This was worse, though. Much worse. Thranduil let out a soft gasp and hugged the earth in terror as his _gweth_ withered down to a shriveled stalk and his testicles did their best to hitch back up into his body. Even with the hateful sight gone, he felt in his mind the presence of a disembodied, lidless eye searching and burning. He dared not twitch a muscle or draw a breath lest the sound bring it down upon him.

He felt the presence, searching, probing, and underneath the curiosity, a malicious glee. He lay frozen, paralyzed. Soon they would come . . .

"Thranduil." A hand fell on his shoulder and his body gave a great jerk. Fortunately, he hadn't the breath to yell; it came out in a weak rush of air: "Ahhhh . . ."

"Thran, look alive," Galion's voice hissed. "I came to bring you back."

"You aren't supposed to be here," Thranduil managed to mutter, caught between annoyance that his orders had been disobeyed and relief that his valet had come to his rescue. Without the intervention he most likely would have lain there frozen until _Ardhon Meth_.

"Right. Neither should you be." Galion flicked a quick glance at the summit of Amon Lanc. "Nasty."

Was he really so unaffected? Thranduil wondered. Their eyes locked. Galion's insubordination would not be mentioned later, neither would the fact that his valet had found him quivering and sweating in mortal terror and on the verge of screaming like a maiden. This was the pact that had existed between them since their days together in the cradle.

Most importantly, Thranduil now knew exactly who had taken up residence in his woods; what he was dealing with.

"Please come, Sire," Galion whispered, falling back seamlessly into his servant role. "The scouts found something you must see."

He turned and left, not looking back.

The naked corpse of the missing guard hung transfixed against the broad trunk of an oak tree, his two hands above his head pinned by a single crude spear. They had plucked out both his eyes, and his genitals . . .

Thranduil turned quickly away. One of the trackers had already been violently ill into the undergrowth, and it was all he could do not to follow suit. He finally raised his head to see the thin-lipped faces of his general and the rest of his party. "Get him down from there," Thranduil said.

"They will know we were here if we do that," Magorion said.

"They know we're here already," Thranduil snapped back. "I will not leave him." The dead guard had been left as a chilling message, to mock him, Thranduil knew. The new master of Amon Lanc would let him go this time to skulk home with his tail between his legs, laughing at his impotence and enjoying the sick game of cat and mouse for a while longer.

As he watched his men go about the grim business of retrieving the body of their comrade, Thranduil tried to rid himself of the shameful feeling of relief that the death meant he would not have to make the choice between entering that horrid place and leaving one of his own behind.

They withdrew, silent and disheartened. They retrieved their horses at the southernmost settlement, telling the family of the slain guard, whose body had been given a decent burial once they had reached a spot far enough away from the taint of the tower, that he had died bravely in defense of the realm. Thranduil could only hope that it was true.

Even as the remainder of the tracking party rode northward, Thranduil was already making plans to order the southernmost of his folk to pull back north of the _Men i Naugrim _and to redouble the patrols along the now shrunken border. In a realm still lacking in manpower because of the grievous losses at the Dagorlad, assigning extra warriors to the patrols would mean fewer to work on the delving of the northern stronghold, but it could not be helped. In a small secret corner of his mind, Thranduil felt a measure of relief; a delay would put off the final confrontation with his wife, which he dreaded.

Even though he returned as he had set out, without his missing warrior, the mission had not been an utter failure. Thranduil was now completely assured of the rightness of his course. Amon Lanc, his boyhood home, belonged to the Enemy now, and that enemy meant to have the entire forest before it was through.

They rounded the final bend in the avenue of oaks and beeches leading up to the palace, and Thranduil's heart sank. For the first time since he had returned home from the war, indeed, in all their marriage, Lalaithiel was not there standing on the steps to meet him.

~o~

Lalaithiel awoke early, but not so early that Thranduil's side of the bed was not already empty. She slipped into a simple dress of muted forest hues, one that would suit her plans for the day. She bound her hair into a utilitarian plait, and, moving stealthily, she tiptoed past the open door to her husband's dressing room. He was in there, of course, with Galion, getting ready for the day.

Not for the first time, she shook her head, wondering why it was that a grown man needed someone to dress him and do his hair. She had never quite understood it from the very first days of her marriage to Thranduil, but she doubted she would be getting an answer anytime soon. Her husband's folk were strange and made no sense sometimes.

Today, she felt glad that Galion diverted Thranduil's attention. She knew her husband would not approve of what she planned to do, and she hadn't the energy for a confrontation. She made her way down the back stairway, to the side door the chambermaids used when they took the chamber pots out to the privies each morning. After that, it would be only a short trip across the yard to the shelter of the back wall of the stables and the woods beyond.

"I am not sneaking through my own house," she muttered to herself, although she was doing that very thing. If the sentry guards saw her, there would come the enquiries, politely couched of course: "Where are you going this morning, my Lady?" and "Do you not wish an escort, my Lady?" And when she told them no, equally politely but firmly - she was the Queen, after all - the poor fellows would have to deal with her husband's temper, which could be a fearsome thing if he found any of his subordinates to be remiss in their duty.

Lalaithiel was no fool. The forest held very real dangers, but nowhere near what her husband - a very frightened man judging by the snatches of words she heard as he lay beside her at night trapped in the toils of his nightmares - believed. Should she meet one of the _Yrch_, she had the ability of her folk to still her breathing and fade into the undergrowth, becoming nigh unto invisible. If worse came to worst, she could leap up into the trees and travel from branch to branch as easily as could a squirrel, a skill Thranduil had never been able to master while sober.

In the years since the poor valet's wife, Mistress Nínim, had died, the spiders had been hunted back. The foul things were too numerous to be eradicated entirely, but their nests were kept far away from the populated areas. If she did meet one, she carried on her belt the knife her father had given her at her coming of age and taught her to use.

She needed no guarded escort simply to pay a visit to her mother. Perhaps danger did indeed lie in the woods to the south, but it had not reached here. She thrust the next thought away quickly: at least not yet.

Even so, as she moved among the pines and let her feet take an upward course, leaving the more tended woods near the palace far behind, she noticed a new darkness among the trees, a chill in the air that belied the warmth of the bright autumn day. It was a chill more of the spirit than of the body.

A strand of old spider web, its inhabitant long dead, hung down across the trail, and it brushed her face as she passed, soft as silk. The stickiness was long gone; it felt almost pleasant. Lalaithiel noted this with surprise and thought, 'Hmmm . . .' but put the thought away for later. She had reached her destination.

The huts stood clustered about a clearing, almost fading into the surrounding greenery unless one knew where to look. The huge tree at the edge of the common area, the one Thranduil had fallen from on the first day of their marriage, much to the amusement of her father and brother, had grown old and died, being replaced by a sapling that grew to ruinous old age and was superseded by yet another. Change happened so slowly that she barely noticed it - until now.

She found her mother kneeling on a hide blanket, hulling an apron-load of walnuts. They were the best nuts, yielding a bountiful supply of flavorful meat once cracked, but the hulls were as great a prize for their deep brown dye.

Without a word, she sank down beside her mother and set to stripping, the glistening nuts going in one pile for drying and later picking, the green hulls to another. Her mother turned to her with a raised eyebrow, and Lalaithiel shook her head. Yes, her hands would be stained, a dark brown stain that resisted even the strongest soap, but her husband's people had long since learned not to remark upon the foibles of their Queen.

After a while, Lalaithiel spoke first. "You know what he means to do?"

"How could we not? The talk is all over the woods of the vast delvings in the north - and of the troubles in the south."

"What am I to do, _Amèh_?" she said, her voice sounding small and childlike in her own ears. "He means to take me away from all of this. He means to take everyone."

A long silence passed, her mother's face creased in painful thought as the hulls dropped onto the pile, one by one. "Dach-nai," she finally said, using Lalaithiel's spirit name, the secret name reserved for only the most private and solemn of occasions, "as my daughter, your fate was never to be commonplace, nor your path an easy one. I knew this as I made you, and I knew it as I gave birth to you. My mother must have known the same as she brought me into this world, as must her mother before her. I had no choice - if I were to spare you, you would never be. This is our lot. And now it begins."

"It has already begun, _Amèh_," she murmured. Indeed, it had begun in the early days of their marriage, upon his return from the war, tired, frightened and wounded in spirit. "He can't . . . he can't even give me a baby."

The line of her mother's lips hardened, as if she had just experienced one of her glimpses of the future. "Perhaps that is just as well. You never know what fate will bring." Three more hulls fell onto the pile. Plop, plop, plop. "My dear little girl, think on this. Why did you choose him - other than he's a pretty thing to look at?"

It popped out without a thought. "He's strong." And indeed he was. Even now, Thranduil was like a force of nature, the rain that sets the rivers rushing down the mountainsides in a froth of white water, the gust of wind in a summer storm that knocks a tree flat. When set on something, he was unstoppable.

Nîwel raised an eyebrow and then gave a knowing nod. "And strong men do not tame easily, nor would we want them to. We choose them for their strength, to lead us and to make the hard decisions. How can we complain when they do that very thing?"

"_Amèh_, I cannot! I cannot leave these woods, these mountains - everything I have ever known. I cannot leave you!"

"That is what I said to your father when he decreed we would leave the Waters of Awakening. I could not face the loss of the land of my birth, no matter how sorely it had changed. I could not face leaving my parents behind, for I knew they would never journey with us, any more than they would set out with the others, back before the sun rose and we had only the stars to light us."

Lalaithiel stared at her mother in surprise. She knew her parents had come from the east, long-years before her birth, but this part of the story she had not heard before. "What happened?"

The pile of fat green nuts in their plump shells waiting to be hulled had dwindled to none as the two of them worked. Her mother wiped her brown-stained hands on a piece of cloth and smiled sadly. "We are here, are we not?"

~o~

Lalaithiel helped her mother carry the two separate piles of hulls and nuts into the hut and then bade her goodbye. Instead of heading for home, she let her feet carry her to a clearing in the forest, their clearing. The bower of pine branches that Thranduil had built with his own hands and filled with seasonal blossoms, the special place where they had sat during their courtship, lay long fallen, melted into the earth. Here they had begun their marriage.

She sat on a rock beside a pool, alone with her thoughts. Here was the very pool she had crouched in on a summer day so many long-years ago, taking a quick bath in the heat. She had heard a crashing in the woods, and a stag bounded through the clearing, followed by a young elf-man, his bright hair of an impossible gold flying out behind him and his skin glistening with the sweat of the chase. He skidded to a stop, and the stag ran on, forgotten.

He stared at her, his chest rising and falling with the remnants of exertion. She felt her breath quickening too. "Will you hand me my dress?" she said, nodding to the garment hanging over a nearby branch.

She watched as a slow smile bloomed on his face. "And what if I don't?"

She held back a mischievous laugh, the laugh that was later to earn her the lover-name of Lalaithiel. "Then I suppose I'll have to get it myself." Slowly she stood, letting the water cascade from her body. His mouth fell slightly open, his breathing stopped, and in those gem-bright blue eyes of his, she saw the look of a man whose heart was no longer his own. Nor was hers.

Lalaithiel, no longer a simple forest girl but a queen, sat alone in the woods now darkening with the taint from the south. She had lied to her mother. She had not married Thranduil for his strength, although strong he was, and stubborn too. She, alone, knew how sadly his strength was tested as she listened to him mutter in the night and held him when he woke and watched as the tiny lines of fear began to mar his smooth, untroubled skin.

She had been seduced by the reflection of herself in his eyes, an image of impossible beauty and perfection. He adored her. How could she resist returning that love?

She looked down onto the still surface of the pool and saw staring back up at her only an ordinary elf-woman, sad, tired, and a little frightened.

Lalaithiel, no laughter left within her, began to weep, and her tears mixed with the waters of the pool.

~o~


	6. The Counsel of the Wise

**Part Six: The Counsel of the Wise**

_"And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.  
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."  
Ecclesiates_

Details, details, details. The rough excavation of the caves had been completed, the rooms and hallways laid out according to Thranduil's design. The light and ventilation shafts were in place, and so was the piping that brought water down from the huge cistern at the top of the mountain. Now it came down to the more prosaic details: the fittings for the kitchens, the design of the torch-holders for the passageways and the sconces for the living chambers, and the patterns of the wooden doors for those same chambers, for privacy was just as important in a cave as in a wooden palace.

It felt good to be reaching the end of the project, and yet the approach of the time when he could put aside his nagging fear also hastened the inevitable confrontation with Lalaithiel. And that was Thranduil's greatest fear of all.

He sat at his desk, playing with his pen, a lovely instrument with a handle of carved deer horn and a silver nib that saved on the time he spent sharpening now that he was doing so much writing and drawing. He was sketching idly on a design of leaves and vines that he thought might look good on the mantel of the fireplace in his new privy chamber. Anything, anything to keep his mind off the conundrum.

The door creaked open and Galion's dark head peered around the jamb. "My Lord . . ."

"Yes, Galion?" Thranduil traced the veins on a leaf, darkening them for emphasis.

"There are two visitors who desire an audience with you."

Thranduil put on his kingly face, rose, and went out through the door to the throne dais. At first glance, the two strangers seemed to be elderly mortal men dressed in robes more of Mannish than Elven cut, one a soft grey and one brown. The one in brown, the shorter of the two, with shaggy brown hair that matched his clothing, was staring out the window in seeming fascination at a robin singing on a branch of a nearby tree and did not mark his approach. The other peered at him intently from beneath bushy grey eyebrows, with a shrewd, measuring look.

Thranduil blinked. For a moment, the vision of the old men wavered, and he fancied he saw two shimmering beings, taller, younger, and glowing with a shifting light. Some glamour was at work here. In addition, he felt the sort of odd sensation he had experienced only in Mordor and recently in the southern reaches of his own woods, but rather than the cold malevolence of the Accursed, these two radiated a feeling of benevolence tempered with quiet strength.

_'Oh, what have we here?' _Thranduil asked himself as he smoothed his robes and settled onto the throne.

The brown one turned - he hadn't the failing hearing of an old Mortal at any rate - and smiled, with an utter lack of guile in his gold-flecked brown eyes. _'This one,'_ Thranduil told himself,_ 'I can trust.'_ The other? Now, that was a different matter. The other one, the leader obviously, although Thranduil could not have explained how he knew it, still regarded him with the benign air of a favorite uncle, yet something lay beneath - a sense of purpose in those young-old eyes. _'This one will not hesitate to use me if he must,'_ Thranduil thought. '_He means me well - he means all of us well - but . . . he serves a different master.'_

Thranduil felt himself probed mentally, as he so often did to Mortals himself. He smiled blandly and shut the intrusion out. He cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow expectantly.

The grey one smiled back.

_'Well, I'll be dipped in orc-shit!'_ Thranduil thought with wry amusement. _'He's going to make me speak first.'_ He really would have to keep an eye on this one, whoever or whatever he was, with the stones to put a king on the defensive in his own palace. Aloud, he said, "What may I call you, my friends?"

"Incanus, they named me in the south when I journeyed there," the grey one replied. "The Dwarves of the great dwarrow in the Misty Mountains, the one you Elves call Moria and Durin's Folk call Khazad-dûm, have dubbed me Tharkûn. But among your folk, I am known as Gandalf."

"Elf of the staff," Thranduil murmured, with a nod at the tall gnarled stick the fellow carried, although he seemed no Elf - at least in the shape of his body. He did have about him that odd light that Thranduil had come to associate with the _Lachenn_ exiles he had met at the war in the south, and who still hung about Elrond Peredhel's sanctuary at Imladris. "It seems a most fitting name for you, Grey Wanderer."

"And now it seems you have another, Brother Dreamer," the brown one said. "Mithrandir - it suits you. I am Radagast, my lord Thranduil," he continued. "I too have several names, but I like Radagast the best. So much better than 'fool' which I have been called also."

That brought a chuckle out of Thranduil. He definitely liked this one. "What brings you to my halls?"

"Passing through on my way to the east," said the one called Gandalf, "in search of two colleagues who came before me. Perhaps you may have seen them, fellows in blue traveling in a pair?"

Thranduil shook his head, and Gandalf reached into his robes, as if he had almost forgotten something. It was the gesture of an old man, charmingly harmless, and Thranduil was not fooled for an instant. "Elrond Halfelven gave me this letter for you, as long as I was headed this way."

Gandalf passed a rolled parchment to a footman, who brought it up to the throne. Thranduil took it, broke the seal and read:

_Thranduil,_ the letter began, in Elrond's neatly rounded tengwar, _I'm sure you will show the bearers of this letter your customary hospitality. The grey Ithron in particular. He is more than he seems at first glance, and Cirdan agrees with me. He shows an especial interest in the new presence in the south of your woods, the tower we have begun to call Dol Guldur._

Thranduil held back a bitter smile. 'His woods' indeed? How like the _Golodhrim_ to hold him responsible for every little thing that went wrong in these parts. The tower lay directly across the river from Amroth's realm of Lothlórien and should really have been Amroth's problem, although in Amroth's defense, the current king of the Golden Wood was in no better position to fight off the threat, what with his armies having been almost as badly depleted at the battle of the Dagorlad, than was Thranduil. With the Anduin, wide and deep at that point, providing a natural barrier, why should he bother?

Now, if mithril had been discovered in the southern wood rather than orcs, Thranduil had no doubt that Elrond and his _Golodhren_ advisors would be disputing ownership of the territory. For now, it was his problem. He scanned the rest of the letter quickly - just the usual pleasantries and Elrond's signature. Thranduil re-rolled the parchment and began to stuff it into his own robes for safe-keeping. He halted at the last minute, wrinkling his nose.

_'Nuath!'_ It smelled just like that horrid pipeweed of which the _Naugrim_ were so fond, the dried and crumbled leaf the Men of Gondor called sweet galenas and everyone else called Westman's weed. Had this Gandalf taken up the nasty habit too? Thranduil sincerely hoped the old man would be willing to take his pipe and his smoke outside. He handed off the parchment to Galion, who bore it away as if he were carrying a dead rat.

"You have concerns about Amon Lanc, Master Gandalf?" Thranduil said.

"Yes, Dol Guldur," Gandalf replied, and Thranduil suppressed a little shudder to hear that foul name spoken aloud for the first time. "The Council -"

"The Council?"

Gandalf smiled disarmingly. "A group of the Elven Wise, and another member of my order."

"I see." Thranduil tried his best to keep his frown from showing. As a prince of the realm first, and later King, he had rarely experienced the snub of not being invited to a party, but there was a first time for everything, he supposed. Of course, a Silvan rustic such as himself would not be deemed fit to join the Council of the Wise. He caught Radagast regarding him with a rueful smile and realized that the brown wizard had not been included in the august body either. "Go on please."

"The Council suspects the tower's builder may be one of the Nine, perhaps Khamûl the Easterling."

"I pray that you are right, Master Gandalf," Thranduil said. Having one of the Ulairi so close would be bad enough, but he found it preferable to his worst suspicions about the dark tower's inhabitant. "Even so, I fear you may be overly optimistic. What are your plans?" Mistaken though this Council of the Wise might be, Thranduil would take any help he could get.

"On my return from the East, my lord Thranduil," Gandalf continued, "I may take a closer look for myself."

"I would strongly advise against that," Thranduil said. "But you are not my subject. It is your own choice."

"My lord," said Radagast, "I would ask your leave to dwell for a time at the western borders of your forest. The birds and beasts of your land intrigue me."

"You have my permission and my blessing, good Radagast," Thranduil told him. "The creatures of the wood, and the Woodmen too, will need more than one protector in the days to come. Now, my guests, please come and enjoy the comforts my palace has to offer, such as they are." '_And for as long as they last,'_ he finished silently, knowing that he would not tarry here for long . . .

~o~

The trees had changed. How long had it been since he last took this trail? The lifespan of oaks, surely. Tûron and Nîwel were frequent honored guests at the palace, but Thranduil, busy with other duties, had little occasion to visit the haunts of the _Evair_.

Today he felt the same as when he had first trod the winding upward path behind his new bride as a nervous supplicant, a stranger to an alien culture, sick with fear at the prospect of losing that which was most important to him. In more than a thousand years it seemed he had come full circle. Only the trees were different.

He found Lalaithiel's father sitting in the shade of an elm tree beside his hut, leaning back against the broad trunk and hollowing out the bowl of a cup made of a solid oak burl. "Good morning, _Hîr Adar_," he said, sinking down beside him to sit cross-legged on the ground.

Tûron remained intent on his work, the thin curls of hardwood falling away before the blade of his knife: the same knife Thranduil had exchanged with him on the night of his coming of age ceremony, its blade now grown thin with repeated sharpening. "I hear you are planning to leave us, Thara-ndhul."

Thranduil nodded.

"Soon?"

"Yes, _Hîr Adar_, and that is why I have come here today, to ask if you will come with us to the north."

Tûron shook his head, and another chip of wood fell away. "I do not intend to."

"In that case, I have come to beg you and your people to come with us. These woods are no longer safe."

Tûron looked up and around, finishing with an eloquent glance to the south. "I know that better than most, son. But they are no longer my people to lead. Some, I think, will go with you into the north. Others will not. I intend to stay here and take my chances."

"That is madness, Tûron. Do you think I wished to do this thing? But I have no choice." Thranduil paused and threw up his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "Your daughter . . . Lalaithiel, is reluctant to leave all she has known. She is unwilling to live underground, even though it is the only place she can be safe."

"Can you really blame her?"

"No," Thranduil sighed. "But if you and your lady were to come with us, to be safe too, it might ease some of her pain."

"Do you recall, at the very beginning, how I told you there would come a time when the burden would grow heavy? Well, you are getting your first taste, and it is a bitter one indeed. I am sorry, son, but I cannot."

"_Hîr Adar_, I . . . I am afraid that she won't come with me."

Tûron set aside his carving and regarded Thranduil with a sad smile. "Let me tell you a story . . .

"I recall a time before the sun first rose, with the moon chasing her. We lived beside the waters then, and the cool, pure light of the stars was gentle on our eyes. The others had left us long before, in a time that only my parents could recall. The Dark Hunter - the one who had taken youths and maidens out on solitary business - seemed only legend designed to frighten the young ones from wandering too far astray; he bothered us no more.

"Then, the world began to change. The sun's bright light blinded us at first, but it revealed colors I had never thought possible. Even in the time of darkness we came to call the night, the moon waxed and waned, leaving us only three days out of every twenty-eight when the stars could be seen as they were meant to be, to do our solemn business of taking our mates, investing our kings, and singing our paeans to the One who put us beside those waters. It was at such a time that I took Nîwel to wife and received the knife that you carry now.

"There were many who decried the changes, calling it the work of fell hands in the West, but I embraced the new world for its beauties. I found it exhilarating."

Tûron paused, and his expression became solemn. "But not all change is kind. A new light appeared in the sky, a star that moved, brighter than all the others. We began to hear rumblings from the west, as if of a distant storm. One evening, a ball of fire flew overhead from east to west with a shriek that curdled the spirit and made us clap our hands over our ears. All that night, the ground shook like a dog ridding itself of fleas, so violently that none of us could keep to our feet. The sea began to slosh. I remember how Nîwel and I lay clasped together, listening as huge chunks of rock peeled away from the cliffs and crashed into the bay, thinking each moment would be our last.

"The next morning, the sun rose on a dim day, as if her face were veiled in smoke and ash. Instead of the waters, we beheld mudflats where fish flopped and died, as far west as the eye could see. Within a few days they began to stink. Within months, they had dried into a sea of burning sand that stung our eyes when the wind blew out of the west. And it did, Thara-ndhul - it did. And still we waited, for the rains that never came."

Thranduil recalled his own father speaking in awed tones of a night when the earth trembled and groaned and he came out of his cave in the Ered Luin the next morning to find the sea lapping at his feet, where all of Beleriand had lain. Truly, had the disaster been so far-reaching?

"There were some who muttered that the One, finding some fault in our faith, had turned from us and was testing us," Tûron continued. "Perhaps it was so - I did not know. What I did know was that what little water had remained was now disappearing. The game had died or moved away, and we would die too, unless we left. Many others agreed with me.

"Nîwel wept and railed and accused me of ripping the heart out of her for dragging her from all she knew and loved. Her own father was resolved to stay, being no more willing to follow me west than he had Araw or the Greycloak. She swore she would not come with me if I persisted in my madness. I almost lost my nerve, then. How did I know but that the entire world had burned and withered, leaving us to wander westward through a wasteland until we died and left our bones bleaching in the sand?"

"You did the right thing," Thranduil said. "You are here, and you are alive."

"I knew it in my heart," Tûron said, with a bitter smile. "Or am I merely speaking with the keenness of hindsight? You see, son, I have walked in your shoes, questioning my own wisdom and facing the prospect of losing something more important to me than my own life."

"What did you do?"

"We are here, are we not? But as I took my first steps westward away from the Waters of Awakening, leading a train of the like-minded, my heart felt like a stone. When, at the last moment, Nîwel fell into line beside me, silent and weeping but with me, I knew I could never risk such a thing again. I promised her that I would never henceforth require such a sacrifice from her, and to that, I remain true. Fortunately, the decision is mine no longer."

"I don't understand," Thranduil said.

"Even now?" Tûron shrugged and sighed. "I still wonder what became of those we left behind. Our travels were hard and long, but eventually we came to the Greenwood and found a home beneath the trees. Here, we had our family and built a new life. It isn't the Waters, but it has sufficed. Neither Nîwel nor I are eager to leave it."

"You can do it again, _Hîr Adar_. I beg you, come north with me to safety."

Tûron shook his head. "No, Thara-ndhul. I have done it once, and I shall do it no more. Here, in these mountains, I will stay to meet whatever end awaits me."

Thranduil sighed. "That leaves me in a very uncomfortable position."

Tûron shrugged and picked up his partially finished bowl again. "I must do what I have to do, and you must do what you need to do. That is the way of the world."

"But what of your daughter - my wife?"

Tûron favored him with a final smile. "She will do what she wishes. And that, son, is between the two of you."

~o~

On his way back home, Thranduil took a detour to their special spot, the clearing where he had first come across Lalaithiel bathing and had watched, dumbstruck, as the water cascaded from her naked body like white gems. The lean-to of pine branches that he had built with his own hands had collapsed into the earth long ago. Thranduil smiled, recalling the days when he would follow her about like a puppy, carrying her basket for her, only to end up in this spot, sitting with her cuddled under his arm, talking for hours on end. How long had it been since he filled that shelter with mountain flowers for her? How long since they had been here together at all?

Something had been lost over the years, he began to understand, and he would have to find it again if he did not want to lose her entirely.

Back in his study, he spent hours hunched over his desk working with his pen and paper. A footman had been in to light the afternoon candles and gone again before Thranduil summoned Séregon to him and held out his finished drawing. "See that this gets to the cavern artisans and that they begin work on it as soon as possible."

"But, Sire - are you certain of this?"

"Am I ever uncertain of my orders?" Well, of course, he was privately uncertain of many things, but it had been many _ennin_ since he'd had the luxury of showing it. "I know the interior of that mountain like the back of my own hand. It will be as I say. See to it, Séregon, that it is done as soon as possible."

_Now, pray Elbereth, let it work . . ._

~o~


	7. The Marble Arch

**Part Seven: The Marble Arch**

_"Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.  
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;  
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come,"  
The Song of Songs_

Lalaithiel awoke that morning to find Thranduil already up and dressed in simple attire, sitting at the foot of the bed. "Get up, my dear," he said, "and put on your riding clothes. We travel north today, and I wish to cover many miles before nightfall."

She blinked and ran a hand through sleep-tousled hair. "You take too much for granted, Thranduil. What if I refuse to come?"

His face took on a look she rarely saw, and when she did see it, it was directed at others, not her. "Need I remind you that I am your husband and your King? I am loath to order you, but I will do so if you force me."

"Is that so?"

He nodded. "I will tie you to the back of my saddle and drag you north kicking and screaming all the way if I must." He paused then, his shoulders sagging just a little. "This is important. Please, Lalaithiel, at least have a look at what you so despise before you spurn it."

She raised an eyebrow. He merely crossed his arms and continued to stare at her.

"I would have to pack some things," she said.

He held up a neatly wrapped bundle. "No need - I've taken the liberty."

"Oh, no, Thranduil! Please tell me you did not make Galion do it," she said, not sure whether to be horrified or amused at the thought of her husband's valet handling her under-things.

He shook his head. "I did it myself. I'm not entirely helpless, you know."

She gave him a long, piercing look and sighed. "Very well." She supposed she owed him that much.

The ride north took place mostly in silence, with only the creaking of saddle leather and the tramp of the guard's marching feet as accompaniment. Thranduil had insisted on traveling with a larger troop of soldiers than usual, because of her presence, Lalaithiel suspected. Galion accompanied them too, his light duties consisting only of raising their tent and ceremoniously laying out Thranduil's bedroll at night and bringing them their food at mealtime.

As the days passed, Lalaithiel noticed the sharply rising mountainsides and the deep ravines giving way to a more gentle rise and fall of the land. The forest changed too. She saw fewer and fewer of the dark firs that gave the Emyn Duir their name. The foliage of the hardwood trees, just newly come into leaf, looked like a lacy green mass against the brief glimpses of blue sky above. The woods smelled different too: a scent of spring flowers and the grass trampled underfoot rather than the ever-present smell of pine. How could anyone choose to leave that delightful perfume?

She had to admit grudgingly that the light was brighter, and not merely because the sun reflected off leaves rather than evergreen boughs. A sense of doom had lifted as they went north, an oppressive weight that she had not noticed - so slowly had it crept up upon the mountains of her home - until she came out from under it.

In time they reached a section of the forest where the oaks and elms rose gracefully and the grass below glowed with an emerald light. The trail began to drop, cutting down through a deep ravine that reminded Lalaithiel of the steep hillsides at home. At the bottom lay a flat expanse of river bank dotted by stands of willows and cottonwoods. The river lay beyond, spanned by a stone bridge, and beyond that rose a tall hill, more like a mountain in shape, with vertical faces of bare rock on its upper heights.

At the sight of the bridge, Lalaithiel gave her husband a penetrating look. She had been literate for many counts of long-years, ever since Oropher had come among them from the south with his system of marks for the rendering of sounds and ideas. In the early days of her marriage, to quell the boredom and loneliness while Thranduil was off to war in the south, also to gain knowledge of her husband's people and the wisdom to rule them during the period of her regency, she had passed the time reading the histories she found in Oropher's collection of books and scrolls. In a way, she could understand Thranduil's fear now, for these had contained tales of ancient and hidden kingdoms, of people she did not know, falling one by one to sack and ruin. She recalled one in particular, an underground fortress by the name of Nargothrond, that had been overrun when its king had made the tactical mistake of listening to the advice of a stranger and building a bridge over the river that ran past its gates.

Thranduil returned her a bland smile and said, in that disconcerting way he had of sensing her unspoken thoughts, "The bridge has a keystone, held in place by spell and hidden mechanism. At my word, or that of my captains, it will collapse into the stream. May Elbereth grant I never have to use it."

They dismounted on the other end of the bridge, leaving their horses to the servants and workmen. Up a wide half-flight of stairs lay a spacious semi-circular courtyard, and, beyond that, a set of massive stone doors banded in iron. Thranduil spoke a word, and the doors ground slowly open, revealing only darkness beyond the initial pool of bright sunlight. To Lalaithiel, in her present mood, it seemed like the mouths of hell.

Thranduil reached out his hand, and together they entered. The air was cool inside, pleasantly so, as Lalaithiel blinked, allowing her eyes to adjust to the gloom. "It is like this year round," Thranduil said. "No more sweltering in the summer heat, and a simple fire suffices in winter."

They moved at first through a twisting tunnel lit by reddish torch light. Here and there passages branched off, to the stables and to storerooms, she supposed. The stone walls looked like the natural cave, with only a few rough tool marks where the way had been widened for easy passage. Was this the vaunted delving that had taken so many years to accomplish? She found herself unimpressed.

Beside her, Thranduil let out a little laugh. "Confusion for newcomers," he said. "Let strangers think us a rough and rustic folk. Those who take that fork in the tunnel back there to the throne room will never know differently. I don't want to reveal all my secrets."

They rounded a corner, and Lalaithiel found herself back in the light. They were in a capacious reception hall from which a wide stairway rose for two flights and then narrowed as it continued on to levels above. Its banister, carved from stone, was in the shape of a sinuous tree branch, mirroring the one at home in the Emyn Duir, as were the candle sconces that lit each landing. From far above came the pale natural glow of a light shaft. The stone floor of the chamber had been leveled and polished to a dull sheen.

In a tall fireplace along the opposite wall from the staircase, a small fire burned, chasing the damp and filling the air with the pleasant aroma of burning oak.

"Quite an improvement from the smell of bats," Galion murmured from his spot just behind Thranduil's other elbow.

"And Dwarves too," Thranduil replied. "Is all in readiness in the throne room?"

"I believe so, Sire, but I will make certain." Galion went off down a hallway at the rear of the chamber.

She and Thranduil followed at a leisurely pace. The wide passage curved gently, as if following a naturally occurring path, but the walls and floor were smooth save for a frieze of leaves and vines near the ceiling. Near the end, Thranduil said, "Shut your eyes." When Lalaithiel, in no mood to play games, turned and shot him a look, he continued, "Please, my dear, indulge me. I want this to be a surprise."

With a sigh, she complied and allowed him to take her by the hand and lead her forward.

"All right, you may open them."

She did, and found herself holding back a gasp. The room was large, roughly thirty of Thranduil's long paces from front to back and perhaps thrice man height. Here and there, at random, thick stone columns rose from floor to ceiling, as if grown out of the living rock. Compounding the asymmetry, these pillars had been carved into the shape of tree trunks, deftly chiseled lines suggesting bark in the middle, spreading branches near the top, and roots at the bottoms where they widened and flowed out onto the floor. Traceries of foliage adorned the room's ceiling, and the floor, unlike the smooth polished stone of the reception chamber and hallway, had been subtly incised to look like drifts of fallen leaves. Tiny light crystals had been set into the ceiling, and candles burned in candelabra carved into the shape of tree branches, which hung on the walls and the columns, three or four to a trunk. The entire effect was that of a moonless night out in the forest, with only the stars twinkling among the treetops.

The best lit area was a raised dais at the rear of the chamber, wide enough not only for Thranduil's throne and Lalaithiel's smaller ceremonial chair, but with room for a third. The sight gave her a pang. Despite over a thousand years of barrenness, Thranduil had still not lost hope of an heir. As a finishing touch, a beam of natural daylight from a carefully placed shaft fell directly onto the center of the dais, ready to illuminate the occupant of the throne that would eventually sit there as if it were a blessing from on high. How very, very like Thranduil! Her husband might be many things, Lalaithiel thought, but she had to grant he had good taste and a talent for showmanship.

Beside her, Thranduil cleared his throat. "Well . . .?"

Lalaithiel was impressed. She truly was. But some perverse part of her nature refused to give him this small victory. For all its magical splendor, the room was still a shadowy and secretive place, the refuge of a frightened man. "Very pretty," was all she said.

There followed a tour of a large hall for dining and feasting along with other common areas that might be used for workrooms. Up the grand staircase, on the second level, lay a library, empty for now but awaiting wooden shelves and Oropher's scrolls and copied books from the south. And on every level were the marvelous privies, where water for washing could be summoned by merely twisting a pipe in the wall.

At each new wonder, Lalaithiel merely smiled blandly and uttered her standard reply: "Very pretty." She noticed Thranduil beginning to exchange worried looks with Galion, who continued to trail them at a discreet distance.

"One more thing," her husband said, "and then you will have seen all you need to see."

To her surprise, they stopped and turned into an otherwise unremarkable door in the middle of a broad hallway that continued on to end at a set of ornate double doors some paces down. Finding herself in the sort of narrow passageway that servants might use, Lalaithiel raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Where did that lead? Those big doors, I mean."

Thranduil grinned. "To a storeroom for linens and other such supplies. I want that way to look inviting to anyone who might enter this abode bent on mischief. Come . . ."

They continued on a short distance and then took a right turn up three flights of narrow stairs to a wider hallway at the top. Unlike the perfection of the throne room, they seemed to have come to an area still under construction. Lalaithiel saw tools laid aside, and piles of wood shavings beside the newly hung doors.

"We're at the uppermost level," Thranduil said. "Above us is only the cistern and the top of the mountain. This is Galion's room," he said, with a passing gesture at a room whose door stood propped against the wall, awaiting installation. "And this is the royal suite."

They proceeded into a spacious sitting room chamber with a large fireplace where a cheery fire burned. The mantelpiece was carved with a design of oak leaves and acorns, and a crystal set into the ceiling lit the room almost as brightly as day. "We will have hangings," Thranduil said, "and paintings. Whatever scenes you wish to have about you."

Lalaithiel, who of course wanted to have the actual smells and sounds of the forest about her, merely set her lips. "Why the narrow hallways and the roundabout?"

"If enemies should manage to pierce the gate and gain entrance, they would not easily find their way to the chambers of those I love. The passageways look as if they lead to servants' quarters, and they will be disregarded. All my nobles will be in this wing."

Lalaithiel looked to catch Galion's eye, but the valet's face remained impassive.

Thranduil opened a narrow door at the right-hand side of the fireplace, revealing a narrow descending spiral staircase. "Directly below lies an identical set of rooms. For now, it will be a chamber for honored guests - perhaps either one of those _Ithryn_ who visited us a few years past, or even Elrond Peredhel, should he deign to pay us a call. But someday I hope . . ." Thranduil shook his head and left off. "But I get ahead of myself."

A wider door lay to the left of the hearth. A heavy oaken door with a sturdy drop bar. What, Lalaithiel wondered, did her husband think he might be fending off?

"The bedchamber," Thranduil said. "Come."

Galion bowed and turned away as Thranduil led her through and shut the door behind them. The room on the other side was as large as the outer chamber, with a fireplace backing the one in the sitting room, a niche that seemed designed to accept the headboard of a large bed, even though the room was as yet bare of furniture, and doors that she supposed led to dressing rooms.

Thranduil spoke not a word, but he went to the wall at the foot of the bed, the wall that Lalaithiel's internal sense of direction even underground told her faced to the west. He undid a metal latch and pulled open a wooden shutter. Fresh air came into the room, and the light of day. Through a window, set into some four feet of solid rock, Lalaithiel beheld the green forest to the west, with the silver ribbon of the river curling off into the distance.

She took it all in: the deeply set window, its heavy wooden shutters banded in steel designed to withstand a siege of dragon-fire or worse. Her husband was afraid, and for the first time she allowed that he might have good reason for it. And yet . . .

Thranduil stood there with the same look he had worn upon his return from Moria, the night he had given her the dearly won necklace that was to be his betrothal gift to her, the look of a man saying with deeds what his inadequate tongue could not express. On that night, simply glad that he had not gotten himself killed in the foolish gesture, she had reached out and taken him to her before she could lose him again, sealing their bond for however long fate might allow it to last.

Here he stood again, with so much more at stake this time. Imperfect. Flawed. Weak, in the secret moments between them. And yet, despite his fear he was giving her this gift. She would have to give up much for him: home, family, maybe more. Yet, could she live without him through the long-years until _Ardhon Meth_?

No, she decided, she could not.

As she had done so many years before, she held out her arms to him. "Oh, you great royal fool . . ."

"The window is set into a sheer cliff face," he mumbled.

"Come here."

"Nothing can get to it. I can turn a lever from the cistern and it will appear as if a waterfall is hiding it -"

"Shut up, Thranduil," she said, taking him in her arms the way she had on that moonless night so long ago. Like on that night, she pulled him earthward, and this time it did not even require the saying of the vows.

At the last moment, he turned and flipped her above him. "I'll be the mattress this time," he whispered. "No more the cold ground for you."

"Hush," she said, hands fumbling frantically at laces and pulling aside skirts to remove the barriers of cloth between them. "Oh, Thranduil, my love, how I have missed you!" she murmured as they joined and their utterances subsided into heavy breathing and her soft laughter.

~o~

A short time later - a very short time - Thranduil chuckled ruefully. "Well, that had to be the worst performance of my entire life."

Lalaithiel raised her head from Thranduil's shoulder, where she had buried her face after collapsing forward. "Never mind, my love. What it lacked in duration, you more than made up for with sheer enthusiasm."

"I'll make it up to you later, I promise."

She laughed. "Oh, I know you will." She rolled off him and began to smooth her skirts and redo her hair while Thranduil put himself away and laced up again.

Galion, consummate servant that he was, did not so much as turn a hair when the two of them went back out into the sitting room. He reached out to brush at the shoulder of Thranduil's jacket. "You have stone dust on your back, Sire," he said, his face neutral, and Lalaithiel saw the tips of Thranduil's ears pink up briefly.

"Galion," Thranduil said, "have our bedrolls brought up and laid out. We will dine here today, sleep here tonight, and leave in the morning."

"So soon, my Lord?"

"No need to stay any longer."

"All is well, then, Sire?"

Thranduil smiled and nodded. "Yes, Galion. All is well."

~o~

The day of leave-taking, so long awaited and so long dreaded, had finally arrived. Thranduil stood on the steps of his palace surveying the assembled train of his subjects. The _Laegrim_ had gathered together their belongings and their children. His nobles, likewise, waited beside their horses, ready to mount at his signal. What furnishings had not already been transported to the caverns were strapped to pack animals. The chests containing Oropher's scrolls, those same scrolls written in the old king's own hand and carried east from Lindon at the founding of the realm, rode in litters slung between two horses. Ranks of pikemen stood at attention, ready to guard the journeyers on their way north.

The week before, Thranduil and Lalaithiel had paid a final visit to her parents, who maintained their refusal to leave the Emyn Duir, and afterward, the two of them had bidden their clearing a last farewell. There, on the soft bed of moss and pine needles, he had kissed away his wife's tears and made love to her, although for one of the few times since he had returned from the war, he deliberately held back the calling of the _faer_, feeling it unfair to any child to be engendered in a moment of such grief.

Lying together afterwards, she had whispered, "I loved this spot, and I will miss it."

"I'll bring you back here someday. I promise."

She had buried her face in his neck. "Hush, Thranduil. Never make a promise you cannot keep. I have you beside me, wherever we go, and that will be enough."

And now, in the early morning of a summer day, he gazed for the final time on the airy wooden palace that Oropher had built. For over ten _ennin_ a place of song and laughter, the halls which had once echoed to his father's voice now stood empty.

"Sire . . .?" Galion's voice prodded him, awaiting the word.

Thranduil began to give the order to shut and bar the doors behind them, but at the last moment he stopped himself. What did he wish to lock out? Let the deer wander through his throne room. Let the foxes and the badgers come and the birds nest in the rafters. Let families of squirrels shelter in the room where he and Lalaithiel had lain twined in each other's arms. Let the creatures of the wood make use of it until the forest reached out to claim its own, and the rotted fallen timbers nourished a new generation of trees that would sprout in the ruins. The place was his no longer.

"Come," was all he said. He turned and helped Lalaithiel up onto her mare.

The long procession wound its way down the twisting mountain paths. At the turn of the trail Thranduil began to hear singing, a wild and plaintive lament in an ancient tongue, and he looked up to see the ravine sides dotted with the faces of the Faithful peering out from the trees. At the very top of the ridge stood Tûron and Nîwel, their hands raised in a silent gesture of farewell.

Beside him, Lalaithiel rode, her eyes dry and her face bleak. Slowly, deliberately, she changed her grip on the reins and reached out to slip her palm into his. Thranduil clasped it and together the two of them rode, hand in hand, into the north.

~o~


	8. Epilogue: The Work of Her hands

**Epilogue: The Fruit of her Hands**

_"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies."  
Proverbs_

The small internal voice that said, 'It's morning,' summoned Thranduil from sleep. His first official night in his own bed in his own chamber had produced no nightmares. He dimly recalled dreams of a rabbit hopping on a sunlit hillside, of Lalaithiel's silver laughter drifting out of the trees, and himself looking down from a great height, punching his first into the air and yelling, "For Oropher!"

That last sleep vision had been of Mordor, at the Black Gate, but it did not trouble him. It was a good memory. The dream of fire and the evil, mocking voice had not come. He hoped he was done with it for good.

Pale morning light drifted in through the cracks between the shutters, making him secretly glad of the window and Lalaithiel's intransigence that had caused him to have it made. Thranduil stretched lazily and rolled over to face his wife, only to find the bed beside him empty. The pillow still bore the indent of her head, and the covers had been pulled back up, but Lalaithiel was nowhere to be seen.

Where could she have gone? Surely she had not changed her mind even at the last minute and fled his bed to seek her home.

Thranduil quickly pulled on a pair of trousers, grabbing a shirt off a nearby peg. He sprinted barefoot down the stairs and through the hallways, fastening his shirt as he went. Outside the gates, he barely noticed the burgeoning warmth of the summer morning, the rough, new feel of the railing beneath his hand and the rush of the river below. At the guard post at the far end of the bridge, he hailed one of the soldiers. "My wife . . . have you seen the Queen?"

The guard, a dark-haired _Laegel_, nodded. "Yes, Sire. She passed this way not twenty minutes ago."

Mindful of the twigs and pebbles against his bare feet, Thranduil hurried on into the forest, stopping and letting out his breath when he spied Lalaithiel kneeling in the dirt beside the trail, bent over some task.

"Good morning, my love," he said, trying to keep the almost pathetic relief out of his voice. "What are you doing?" Around him, the forest was coming awake. Faint and far off came the sounds of hammering and sawing, as his Silvan folk went about the business of constructing their huts on the ground and their _telain_ in the treetops.

She swept a pile of earth into a shallow hole and tamped it gently firm with the palm of her hand. "I thought we should have ranks of trees bordering the path as we did back at home. I brought these in my pocket from the south." She looked up at him with that soft smile of hers, the one that never failed to make his heart pause for a moment or two in its eternal beat, and she held out a nut in her dirt-smudged hand. "You see? Beeches. For Oropher."

Thranduil sank to his knees beside her and planted a light kiss on her cheek. "For Oropher," he whispered.

He looked back over his shoulder toward the bridge and the river, with the bulk of the mountain beyond, so solid and comforting. It did not feel like home yet, but he knew that would come. They would be safe here.

Thranduil smelled the morning cook fires of the Silvans, and the laughter of a child at play rang out on the morning air. Inside the palace, Galion would be wondering where he had gotten to, ready to help him into his daytime clothing and choose the court robes for the evening. His advisors would be seeking him out with questions about the kitchens, the stables, the guard rotations: a thousand small decisions concerning the running of the new realm. He supposed he should get back inside.

But the sun felt so good on his face, and it warmed his arms through the thin fabric of his shirt. The dirt felt good between his bare toes. And the smell of Lalaithiel's hair rivaled the green perfume of the summer trees. Everything could wait until tomorrow. He and his beloved had all the time in the world.

"Hang my duties," he murmured, earning a delighted grin from Lalaithiel. "Where do you want to plant the next one?"

~The End~


End file.
